Case Studies

Before reading these case studies, you might want to read this description of how we measure and calculate success. How we measure success

Chewable Energy Product

A company that makes a chewable energy product wanted to increase sales on their website through pay-per-click advertising. This product can be used as a healthier alternative than chewing tobacco products.

Challenge:

To generate online revenue through direct website sales.

Strategy:

To create streamlined campaigns and highly focused ad groups to get exposure from people searching terms like “chewing tobacco substitute.” The hope is that this will create an initial awareness of the product, and lead to an immediate and direct sale on the website. However, if they don’t make an immediate purchase, we want to use remarketing ads to create steady reminders of the product in the days and weeks to follow so they will hopefully return to the website and make a purchase.

Ad messaging:

We decided to use a call to action in the ads that challenged people to “Take the 10-day challenge” to try the product.

Results:

By trying a variety of keyword targeting and ad messaging, we were able to hone in on the most successful elements. We optimized by adding negative keywords, removing poorly performing keywords and ads, changing our bids for keywords based on success rates and costs per conversion, restructuring ad groups so we could optimize ads and landing pages for a tighter focus on our best performing keywords, among other things.

This account continues to run very successfully with the following key numbers over the last six months:

Average order value is $30.80

Average cost per conversions is $9.22

Montessori School

A Montessori school that had suffered a strong decrease in enrollment wanted to try a new approach for getting exposure and, hopefully, increasing their enrollment in a speedy way.

Challenge:

To create AdWords pay-per-click campaigns that will be well targeted to parents who are looking for private school or Montessori school options for their children, and to generate leads from those parents.

Strategy:

After examining the situation, a two-part strategy was developed:

Add a lead generation mechanism to the school’s website. We noticed through Google Analytics that website visitors often gravitated to the “prices and tuition” page. Since price information is what visitors wanted, we decided to only give it to them after they submitted a simple web form. After adding their name, email address, and phone number, they would then click the button that says “get access.” They would then be redirected to a page that had pricing information. The school would then have contact information that allowed them to follow up with the interested party.

We employed several different types of AdWords campaigns, including search, remarketing, and demographically targeted display ads to parents between the ages of 25 and 44.

Results:

(Website) The lead generation mechanism was very successful, and continues to bring in about 90 leads per month from any and all traffic sources. The school has been able to follow up with these leads, and convert many of them into new customers. Not only does the lead generation form give them the opportunity to get in contact with the people, it also creates a trackable action that helps guide marketing optimization.

(AdWords–search) The search campaign, which targets keywords such as “Montessori school” and “private school,” has been bringing in leads at a cost of $7.52 per lead. It has the extremely high conversion rate of 45.97%. These are obviously parents who are aggressively looking for school options for their children.

(AdWords–display) The demographically targeted display campaign has a cost per lead of $60.06, but shows a large number of “view through conversions.” View through conversions indicate that the ad was seen at some point in the sequence that led to a conversion. This means they provided an “assist.”

(AdWords–remarketing) The remarketing campaign brings leads at a cost of $63.16, which is still helpful to the school, considering the high cost of tuition and high-value of qualified lead. It also is an enormous website traffic generator, and creates a tremendous number of reminders to keep parents thinking about the school. Per month, it’s averaging about 30,000 impressions, and 150 clicks, at a cost of about $60.

Wellness Center

This is a wellness clinic that offers alternative treatments for certain medical conditions. They wanted to use pay-per-click advertising to help connect with consumers who might be in need of their services.

(For this case study, I will refer to this medical condition as “condition-X.”)

Challenge:

To find a way to generate leads of people who might be concerned about having symptoms of condition-X through pay-per-click ads.

Strategy:

First, we needed to consider what website feature or mechanism would be effective for generating leads. More specifically, what could be offered that would prompt a website visitor to submit their compact information through a form?

Before creating a website, or anything else, we decided to use Google display ads as a market testing platform. We created display ads with a number of different titles related to condition-X, such as “is condition-X a mystery?,” and “have questions about condition-X?” We then ran the ads in a rotation/split-test fashion to see which showed a higher click-through-rate. (We tried 10 different titles in total.) After running the ads for about a week, spending $60, it was clear which ad headline was the most popular. We then set about creating a whole marketing approach based on that theme.

We created a website that offered a free PDF with information related to our theme. The website was created to appear highly relevant and credible for our theme. We then used our winning ad headline in an ad to generate traffic to the site.

Both search and display advertising approaches would be tested. Also, BingAds as well as AdWords was set up for advertising.

Results:

The results from this approach were immediately very successful, and continue to be. Both search and display methods have been effective. In AdWords, the average cost is $6.76 for every person who submits the form. In BingAds, however, the results have been even more successful. It regularly brings in leads at a cost of $3.93 per lead. Because of these results, this business now invests most of their budget in BingAds, and only a small portion in AdWords.

Insurance Agency

This is a local, independent insurance agency that needed help to manage their online exposure through AdWords. Since insurance related keywords for search engine advertising is quite costly, and they did not want to run up big charges with Google, it was decided to pursue an approach that mostly focused on granting.

Challenge:

To get as much branding exposure as possible within an eight-mile radius of their office location for around $300 per month in Google charges.

Strategy:

For this goal, AdWords display ads would be used–employing the CPM bidding method. (With CPM, the advertiser does not bid per click, but rather per 1000 impressions.)

Also, we decided to run a YouTube “in-stream” video ad to be targeted demographically to age brackets between 36 and 75 years of age. These ads will be video commercials that play before other YouTube videos. The viewer can choose to skip the ad after watching the first five seconds. (This is a great deal for the advertiser because the advertiser only gets charged if the viewer watches 30 seconds or more of the video, so any view between five and 29 seconds is free to the advertiser.)

Results:

(AdWords—display) Our display campaign provides an enormous amount of branding advertisement for the money. In a time span of two months, it has generated 1,255,344 active viewable impressions for a total cost of $221. (“Active viewable impressions” means that the ad actually appeared on someone’s screen without the viewer needing to scroll up or down further in order for it to appear.)

(AdWords—video) In a period of two months, the video was viewed (for at least five seconds) a total of 5,279 times. It was viewed for 30 seconds or more 636 times. As I mentioned above, the advertiser is only charged for views longer than 30 seconds. The average cost per view of 30 seconds or more was $.15, making the total cost $98.44. Like our display campaign, we believe that this video campaign creates a tremendous amount of branding exposure to the right demographic, and the right location, at an incredibly low cost.